


take the night off

by RowboatCop



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Coulson taking care of Daisy, Daisy's feelings of guilt, F/M, Hair Washing, Hurt/Comfort, ignores 4x03 and 4x04, post 4x02, the return of grilled cheese
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 14:45:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8331769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: Coulson just wants to take care of Daisy, and just for tonight, Daisy can let herself want it.





	

She wakes up with pain screaming through her arms, her left arm seemingly immobilized next to her, and her first instinct — before she even takes in the room — is to fight.

“Hey,” she hears a voice. “Daisy.” Coulson’s voice, and then Coulson’s hand on her cheek, and she opens her eyes to see him standing over her.

It comes back in a flash — walking into the building with Robbie at her back and seeing Coulson there, tied to a chair. There had been a fight; she remembers using her powers, remembers the pain, and then...nothing.

“We’re okay,” he promises her, and his hand is warm on her face, so she believes him.

“Robbie?”

“He’s okay, too.”

There’s safety here, wherever she is, and the part of her brain that says she doesn’t deserve to feel safe, that she doesn’t deserve to be treated nicely, is silent in her exhaustion. She falls back into sleep, something warmer and calmer than wherever she was before.

 

* * *

 

 

“You’re awake.”

He smiles at her when she finally opens her eyes again, and she’s missed his smile so much it hurts.  

They’re in a single large room, and she’s tucked into the single large bed, Coulson sprawled across a nearby loveseat with a blanket like he’s been sleeping fitfully on the too-small space in between watching her. Off to her left is a kitchen space in the corner, and to the right a large paper screen blocks off the other corner.

The open space and the wood paneling and the large fireplace across from the bed all scream _cabin in the woods_ . _Rustic_ cabin in the woods.

“Where are we?”

“A former SHIELD safehouse.”

“Former?”

“It’s privately owned, now.”

“By you?”

“By Pablo Jimenez.” He smiles, small and more with his eyes than his mouth, and she answers it in kind.

“What…”

“...happened?” He glances down to his lap. “Blake set up a trap to get to you.”

“I figured that.”

“But you showed up anyways?”

“What was the alternative? To just...leave you there?”

Daisy reaches across her body, sets her right arm over her left, over some kind of weird heavy cast that Coulson must have applied. It hurts — her left arm inside whatever the cast is. It hurts much worse that the dull, hollow throbbing she’s gotten used to, that she can still feel in her right arm. And Robbie’s been warning her that her fractures were going to get worse, and she’s guessing it’s finally happened.

Coulson follows the movement of her arms with his eyes, his eyebrows furrowed into a frown as he stares down at her arm, at her hand gripping the cast.

“You shouldn’t risk yourself for me,” he says, like that’s even a thing. She ignores it.

“I remember fighting a group of them…”

“You knocked them out, and then passed out.” He glances down at her arm again, watches her squeeze the cast. “It’s broken,” he affirms what she’d suspected. “When Mack told me...” He frowns, and she wonders what Mack told him. “I figured this might help you. It’ll help speed bone regeneration. It’s pretty miraculous.”

He touches his leg as he says it, and she remembers him walking with his cane for the days she was back on base. It’s good to remember, actually, to hold onto the memory of what she had done to him, of the pain she had caused him. It keeps her grounded now, now that he’s being so nice, as though she deserves any of this.

“And Robbie?”

“I told him to go take care of himself, that I’d look after you.”

She nods, though she hates to think of Robbie being on his own, even though she knows perfectly well that Robbie is fine on his own. But he’s fighting a lot of demons, real and emotional, and she hates to see him trying to do it alone.

“Thank you for looking out for him,” she says because she knows there’s interest in capturing him. Because she knows that someone else might not have let him go.

“He’s your friend,” Coulson says like that explains everything, and it makes her smile even though she doesn’t _want_ to smile.

Because she doesn’t deserve it — doesn’t deserve the soft bed and the way he smiles at her and the way he wants to take care of her. She’s never deserved it, probably, but especially not now, now when she’s responsible for so much death, now when she’s left him, too.

 _Right_ now, though, she wants it. She wants to be here, even though Coulson’s smile makes her chest ache, even though it hurts to want something like this. But she does, she wants it, so she’s going to stay.

It’s like as soon as she gives herself permission to want it, to be here, she can relax into the bed. Drowsiness washes over her, and Coulson rises from his place on the small couch to stand by the bed again.

He reaches forward, like he wants to touch her, but pauses with his hand hovering by her cheek. She can’t figure out for the life of her why he holds back, why he doesn’t touch her now when he did before, so she draws his hand to her cheek and holds it there.

Coulson smiles down at her, his hand warm and comfortable under hers.

“Do you want more painkillers?”

“No,” she answers honestly, even though it hurts. Not because she wants the pain, but because she wants to be here, to feel everything in her right mind, to enjoy this while she can.

She falls back to sleep slowly, like being pulled gently down into the softness of the bed, but always anchored by his hand, gentle on her cheek.

 

* * *

 

 

When she wakes up next, it’s to the smell of a wood burning fire and food — tomato and cheese and butter and she knows exactly what he’s making.

“Your top secret grilled cheese?”

He startles and turns around, meets her eyes over the tiny counter space that separates the kitchen from the rest of the big room.

“Yeah.” He holds up his spatula, as though in demonstration of the meal at hand. “I figured, calcium for your bones and fat to fill you up.”

“Sounds good,” she says, and her stomach growls.

“Hungry?”

“Very.”

She turns and slips out of the bed, holding her left arm in the weird cast against her body, and Coulson drops his spatula and darts across the room to her side.

“I’m fine,” she says, but can’t quite make her tone chastising even though she really doesn’t need him to worry about her so much. Still, she leans against him as his hand lands on her right shoulder, not because she needs it — she doesn’t need it, she doesn’t need him, and it’s refrain she’s repeated too much in these months — but because she _wants_ to. She wants to lean against him, wants to feel his hand on her back, and for today, _just for today_ , that seems okay. “Really, I’m fine.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, something sort of breathless in his voice. “I know. You’re fine.” Like he’s reassuring himself.

He squeezes her shoulder, warm and steady next to her, until she’s seated in the chair. There are four candles lit on the table, and it’s the first moment she notices the lack of other light in the cabin, the lack of electricity and the way the whole room is growing darker in the late afternoon light.

Rustic cabin for sure.

The flames of the candles flicker as he sets down her sandwiches in front of her — two of them, cut on the diagonal, fanned out on the plate like something more important than grilled cheese.

She dives in before he can sit down, eating with her right hand, her left still sitting heavy in her lap. It’s good — good because it’s Coulson’s grilled cheese, because it’s perfectly crispy and browned and gooey, and also good because she hasn’t been eating enough.

It’s been so long since she took enough time for herself.

By the time he sets her bowl of soup down and then drops down in the chair across from her, she’s already demolished one sandwich. Now that he’s watching, she’s slightly more self conscious, tries to gather herself a bit as she drags another triangle of grilled cheese through the soup.

“Oh my God,” she sighs as she bites into her sandwich coated with soup.

He smiles at her from across the table, where he’s chewing on his own bite.

“Good?”

“ _So_ good. Is that secret ingredient still classified?”

He swallows, licks his lips and drops his sandwich on his plate.

“Mmm. If I tell you, you won’t need me to make it for you.”

There’s something so easy and teasing in his tone, like all he wants is to make her more sandwiches, but it reminds her of Mack’s face, that even if she wants to protect them, she still hurts them. (But at least he’s alive, at least Coulson’s alive, at least _they’re all_ alive.)

“Hey,” Coulson calls her out of her thoughts. “I didn’t mean to…” He shakes his head, like he doesn’t know how to finish that thought, but she can read his guilt across his face.

She doesn’t want him to feel guilty, so she tries to let it drop, takes another bite of her sandwich because all the dark thoughts in the universe aren’t enough to make it taste like anything but heaven. As she chews, though, she becomes aware of the way that Coulson is watching her from across the table, a little wistful smile on his face.

When their eyes meet, he blushes.

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s just...good to see you.”

It makes her pause and look at him, _really_ look at him and not just automatically fill in the shape of Coulson she expects to be there. He looks softer than when she last saw him, like he’s wearing his feelings a little closer to the surface, but somehow harder, too, and she can’t quite put her finger on it, on the change in him.

His hair has grown out a bit, and his chin is covered with a fine layer of stubble, white and grey across the sharp line of his jaw, the square shape of his chin. He wears it well, though, the salt and pepper stubble and the longer hair and the collar of his blue shirt open so far she can see his chest hair poking over the top.

It’s all very fascinating in a way she’s not sure she’s ever found Coulson fascinating before — the line of his neck, the top of his chest, the reality of him in front of her.

“You too,” she manages, clearing her throat when it comes out as more of a whisper. “It’s good to see you, Coulson.”

“Daisy,” he sighs her name and looks at her for another moment, and she wishes it didn’t feel like shit, like more proof of the way she’s hurt him that he’s so happy just to sit in front of her now.

“I’m sorry.” She barely manages to get her voice above a broken whisper.

“For what?”

“Mack said that...leaving the team, it still affected all of you. And he was right.”

“It did affect all of us,” Coulson agrees. “But you don’t have to apologize. Do you think I’ve never wanted to run?”

She nods once, remembers him saying this before.

“But you didn’t. You stayed.”

“I stayed,” he agrees, “and because I stayed, you got —”

“No.” Daisy cuts him off. “That wasn’t your fault.”

He shakes his head, but doesn’t push it, and she knows — because she knows him, pretty well actually, which is sort of funny to think about because so often Coulson seems so mysterious to her, closed off and holding onto his pain alone — that it’s not because he agrees with her. It’s just because he doesn’t want to make her comfort him, because he doesn’t want the comfort.

She and Coulson, she thinks, they’ve always understood each other pretty well, even if sometimes she wishes that weren’t true.

“I didn’t want to hurt you.” She watches him across the table as she speaks, watches his big blue eyes that look so _soft_. “You or the team. I didn’t want to hurt you by staying, but I also, when I left, I didn’t want…”

“I know. We all know, Daisy.”

And it’s a lie, because of course it’s a lie, of course she’s hurt them all and she doesn’t deserve their forgiveness. But it’s such a _nice_ lie,that  just for now, she wants to believe it.

He reaches across the table and touches her left arm in its cast, just rests his hand there for a moment. The both of them stare at his fingers on the cast, and then she touches her right hand on top of his, feels the warmth of his skin under her fingers.

And she’s been lacking in a lot of human touch lately, but it occurs to her how much she’s specifically been missing _Coulson’s_ touch. How he touches her so gently and carefully, in a way she definitely doesn’t deserve, but can’t seem to make herself stop wanting.

The moment stretches on, Coulson’s hand under hers, and the thought pops into her brain that she could push it — she could grab his hand, or she could stand up and hug him. Or more. There’s a gnawing ache somewhere deeper than her stomach for _something_ , something she’s been ignoring, and something that maybe he could give her.

Because he would let her take whatever comfort she wanted from him and maybe, actually, he would take comfort from her, too. And maybe, just for tonight, that would be okay.

There’s a noise in the kitchen, though — a precarious stack of pans falling over in tub that she thinks is meant to be a sink — that breaks them apart.

“Eat,” Coulson tells her, gesturing to her sandwich on her plate, and her stomach growls again, so she does.

 

* * *

 

 

“This seems like a lot of work,” Daisy worries as she watches Coulson bring in another bucket full of water from the pump outside to fill the weird little tub that hides behind the paper screen.

She’s _filthy_ , though, and she can’t deny that a bath sounds incredible, so she hasn’t made any real move to stop him from going through so much trouble for her. Instead, she’s just leaning near the end of the tub in this little almost-bathroom space, watching him move back and forth. (The _other_ facilities are twenty paces outside, in a little outhouse, and she’s pretty sure Coulson picked out the a flame-powered hot tub himself because there’s no way it’s standard rustic cabin decor.)

It’s dark outside, now, but the fire from the kitchen and the one across from the bed make the paper screen glow, and it’s not half bad.

“It’s fine,” Coulson reassures her.

“And this tub can heat all that water up?”

“Yeah,” he nods, as they examine the mostly-full tub and the little fire build into the wall that heats and circulates the water. “This thing is actually pretty great.”

The way he says it lets on that he’s definitely the one who picked it out, something to perfectly fit with his tastes, a top-of-the-line appliance even in a cabin in the woods. The way he says it lets on that he’s used it, that he’s sat in the tub in hot water, that he’s been here before. She doesn’t mean to, but she pictures it, his naked body where he must have been, right here.

Even when he walks back out to the pump in the yard, the image stays with her, and she’s not quite sure what to do with it, with her brain pulling up the thought of Coulson in the bath. It’s probably just that it’s been so long, so long since she’s seen him and so long since she’s let herself think about him, but it stays there.

She drags her right hand through the water, surprised at how quickly it has warmed, and tries to push the image out of her head — of getting into a tub where Coulson has sat, naked, of being naked in a place where Coulson has also been naked.

When he walks back into the room, she startles, like he’ll somehow be aware of where her mind was.

“You look deep in thought.”

“Yeah,” she licks her lips and touches her wet right fingers to the top of the cast. “Can I get this thing wet, or…”

“Yeah,” he nods, but frowns as he looks down at her arms — one in a cast, the other mottled with bruises. And she doesn’t _need_ help — she’s managed fine on her own, even if it will be a struggle with one working hand tonight — but the thought of him helping her stirs something in her chest, makes her heart pound too hard in her throat.

Because it’s not something she can ask for, is the truth. Not like a pride thing, not exactly, just that asking for help is...hard.

“I picked up some of your favorite shampoo on our way here,” he tells her, like he’s changing the subject away from what she thinks they’ve both just been thinking about. The way he says is definitely startles her.

“You know my favorite shampoo?”

“That almond one you always buy,” he shrugs, like there’s no reason why he _wouldn’t_ know her favorite shampoo, like it’s just some normal detail for him to have tucked away, and maybe it should seem creepy, but mostly it just seems really sweet.

“I haven’t splurged on that stuff in forever,” she sighs, touches her right fingers to her hair.

“With all the money you must have lying around?”

“That money belongs to other people,” she shrugs it off, and Coulson smiles at her, something soft and pleased and so happy.

“Why don’t you get in, and I’ll go...get it?”

She nods, and fumbles out of her suit once he’s disappeared around the screen, almost can’t believe she slept in it for so long.

The water, once she slips into the tub, is warm and _nice_ on her body as she sinks down until it covers her head, until the water — almost bubbling — fills her senses. For a moment, it feels like a shame that she’ll leave this place tomorrow, that she’ll probably never come here again. But those worries are carried away as she slides her head up out of the water and pulls in a slow breath.

“Not bad, right?”

Coulson’s voice startles her, and she opens her eyes to see him standing beside the tub, almost awkwardly keeping his eyes fixed carefully above her neck. He’s holding two of the candles from the table, and she just watches as he leans over the tub and places them carefully on a little shelf, further illuminating the space.

It’s all so _romantic_ , glowing and warm and soft and so different from the life she’s been living — so different from the life she’s ever lived.

“No,” she answers. “Not bad at all.”

It strikes her again, the thought that she could push things. It’s a terrible thought, almost, that she could take advantage of Coulson, that she could take comfort in him in a way he doesn’t intend. But she’s naked — naked where he’s been naked, too — and the world is lit by the orange glow of candlelight, and she can’t make herself stop wanting his tenderness, his care, his comfort.

It’s almost like she’s outside her body as she looks up at him and slides further up in the tub, high enough that her breasts rise above the level of the water, high enough that she can feel colder air make her nipples pucker. She watches, fascinated, as his eyes drift down, watches the wonder and surprise and a little fear flicker across his face in the candlelight.

“Thank you,” she tells him because she hasn’t said it and she should, because he’s looked after her and cared for her and offered her comfort and what else can you say to someone who would give you so much, so unconditionally?

“You don’t need to thank me,” he responds, eyes snapped back up to hers, everything earnest and good and _Coulson_ in his expression. It cuts through the haze in her brain, reminds her that this is still Coulson. It’s _just Coulson_ but also _Coulson_ and she _loves him_.

She loves him, and it’s confusing but also enough to make her slip back down so the water covers her chest. Not that it truly hides her, not that he couldn’t still see her body if he wanted to, but it gives some sense of plausible deniability, lets her pretend that she hasn’t considered taking advantage.

“You’ve always been better to me than I deserved, and —”

“No,” he cuts her off again. “No, I’ve always treated you exactly how you deserved.”

It makes her eyes sting and her nose burn and she doesn’t want this, she doesn’t want to talk about this, she doesn’t want his kindness like this. Immediate physical comfort is one thing, but this —

As though he can sense it, he cuts off her thoughts by leaning down to pick up the familiar bottles of shampoo and conditioner.

“Let me wash your hair?”

Like she’d be doing him a favor, instead of the other way around, like it doesn’t sound like heaven to feel his hands in her hair.

“Yeah,” she agrees, pretending that her heart doesn’t start beating too fast again, and then she maneuvers in the tub so her back is to him before there’s any chance to prolong the awkwardness of the moment. There’s a long pause, and her ears twitch with every tiny sound he makes behind her, until she can smell the almond oil and then feel his fingers land gently on her head.

She doesn’t know why it surprises her that he moves slowly, working his fingers in soft circles against her scalp, but it does. It surprises her even though his gentleness fits the moment, the romantic orange glow around them.

The surprise doesn’t last, though, quickly melting into pleasure that drips down her spine as his fingers run through her hair and then back up to massage her scalp.

Daisy exhales and relaxes back into it, into his hands and his touch, and it’s so perfect except that she wishes he would press harder, rub harder into her skin.

“Is that hard enough?” He asks like he knows, and she wonders if he does — if he can tell somehow, if she’s let on something — but she can’t even care.

“Harder.” It comes out broken, half whisper half moan, and her face gets hot with the embarrassment of it, of how much she wants.

“Hmm,” he makes a low noise in his throat as he digs his fingers in harder, as he presses into her scalp and tugs her hair gently so she can’t help the little moan that works out of her throat. “Like that?”

“Y-yeah.”

She’s never had someone do this before, touch her like this, and when he drops his hands from her head to brush across her shoulders, she sighs with the loss.

“Rinse, and I’ll do the conditioner,” he offers, and she shudders just at the sound of his voice before she slips under the water and lets her hair float around her head.

When she raises her head back up above the water, he again smooths his hands through her hair, and she melts back against the tub as he massages her.

“That’s good?”

‘Yeah, good,” she agrees, and she can feel him gather up her hair on top of her head. She wants him to keep touching her, though — like  _wants_ it in a way she hasn't let herself want anything, not for a long time. And it's the physical pleasure and it's the comfort, but it's also  _him_ , it's Coulson and it's the way he touches her like she matters. It's the way he touches her like all that stuff he said before, about how she didn't need to be sorry about how he doesn't hate her, is actually true.

“I can go wait...over there,” he offers, something awkward his voice, and for the first time since he started touching her she notices the way his hands are shaking slightly. That makes it better, that this is something big for him, that it means something big to him and not just to her.

“Stay?” She makes the request without fully thinking it through, but she’s letting herself be here, here with him, and she doesn’t want it to stop.

She can feel him shift next to the tub, and when she turns herself back around, he’s leaned back against the tub, facing away from her with his legs extended across the floor perpendicular to hers. There's enough distance that it's safe, but he's close enough that she could touch the back of his neck if she wanted to.

“Soap?” He offers a bottle, hand stretched behind his back. She takes it and begins to lather with her right hand while watching him from the corner of her eye.

She wants to say something, to start a conversation, but she’s not sure how. ‘ _How have things been?_ ’ is both too much and too little for who they are and where they’ve been, but the time and space between them fills the room like an ocean that she doesn’t know how to cross.

Instead, she rubs her right hand down her body, soaping herself quietly and staring at the back of his head, at the back of his neck above his collar. He’s got a nice neck, and once her hand is clean and soap-free, she gives into the impulse to touch it, wet fingers dripping water onto his collar. His skin feels cool under the heat of her hand, the heat of the water, and he sighs and leans into the touch.

“Do you need to take a bath, too?”

She asks the question almost as an afterthought, a sudden rationalization of why she’s touching him like this, of why her fingers are skating a smooth figure eight from the edge of his hair down to just beneath his collar.

“I’m okay,” he claims, but he squirms a little on the floor and definitely doesn’t move away from her, and she thinks about it again — about Coulson naked in this tub.

She slides her fingers forward, around to the front of his neck, so she can feel his breath and his heartbeat. And then she stops, just rests her hand there as she reclines in the tub, feeling Coulson next to her.

“Daisy?” His voice is low, and she can feel it against her fingers almost as much as she can hear it.

“Yeah?” Her fingers tighten almost unconsciously, against the fear that he’ll ask her to move them, but instead he drags a finger up her arm, and then rests his hand there. 

“Nothing,” he shakes his head, but holds her hand in its place curled around his neck, and just relaxes next to her with his head tilted back against the tub, like maybe the ocean between them isn’t so big after all.

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you tired?”

He asks the question once they’ve dressed themselves behind the paper screen, pairs of basic sweats he grabbed at Walmart, and she really appreciates how careful he was, how much he thought through everything she might need.

“I don’t know,” Daisy answers honestly. She’s _tired_ , tired in her bones because she can’t remember the last time she wasn’t, but she’s not _sleepy_ , not exactly, not after being asleep for a whole day.

“There’s not much to do,” he says almost apologetically, little chagrined smile on his face like he’s failed her, “but I got a pack of cards if you want to…”

“Maybe we could just get into bed,” she suggests instead, and watches his eyes grow a little too wide, then narrow back to normal.

“Sure,” he swallows, eyes darting from the bed back to the little loveseat where he was camped earlier.. “You can get in, and I’ll just stay on the —”

“Coulson,” she cuts him off. “Could _we_ just get in the bed?”

She wants it, is the thing, to just _be_ with him without the nerves and the analysis and the wide eyes.

He nods once and swallows, his face almost too serious even though she understands that it  _is_ serious, getting into bed with her.

Still, they approach the large bed together and climb in on opposite sides with a quiet solemnity that’s almost funny. He’s stiff next to her, stiff and clearly unsure of himself, and she kind of loves this about him — that he’ll wash her hair and sit with her naked, but then lie here like he’s afraid to touch her. Like this kind of touching might cross a line they haven't already crossed.

Daisy is the one that rolls across the middle of the bed and tucks herself against him. Because tonight, she’s wondered about a lot of things that she’s not sure about, about taking and giving comfort, about what she deserves. But right now, all that is silent. Right now, all that matters is that his body is warm and solid, and she can press herself up to it.

Coulson’s arm wraps carefully around her, holding her against him as she pillows her head on his shoulder, and he breathes in a deep slow breath, exhales it like a sigh.

“Comfortable?”

“Yeah,” she agrees, rocking her body a little against his, wiggling further into his side. “You?”

“Yeah.”

He turns his head and presses a kiss to the top of her head.

And it should probably seem weirder than it does. It’s more than they’ve ever been to each other, but somehow it’s also exactly what they’ve always been to each other.

They don’t sleep for a long time — she can feel him awake but silent under her cheek, can feel his hand occasionally smooth down her back like he’s checking that she’s real. Without a clock, it’s hard to know how long they stay like that, but when she’s awakened by early morning light streaming through the window, it’s disappointing. Too soon.

Daisy pushes herself up on her arms — and Coulson was right, the device he put on her left arm really is miraculous — and looks down at him, at his relaxed sleeping face. And later she won’t be able to put her finger on exactly why she does it, whether it’s comfort or gratitude or something else altogether, but she presses a kiss against his mouth, feels his lips under her own — warm and soft and something she’s never realized she wanted.

As she’s pulling back, his eyelashes flutter open, like Sleeping Beauty awakened by a kiss, and the thought makes her smile.

He smiles back.

“Good morning.” His voice is gruff, deeper than usual and a little gravelly, and she likes the sound of it.

“Morning.”

“Would you do that again?”

She smiles wider at that and kisses him again, harder this time, and it’s somehow shocking when he responds, when his lips open under hers and he breathes a moan into her mouth.

“Daisy,” he sighs her name as she pulls back, and it’s never occurred to her how much she likes it — the way he says her name, how much he says her name. She’s not sure who the last person was who said her name at all, but especially like he does.

The thought — of her life lately, of her life at all — brings reality crashing down around her, bursts the little bubble she's chosen to live inside.

“Coulson...I have to leave.”

Because there are things she has to do, things she has to be, and as nice as it is to have this fantasy...she can’t have the other things being with Coulson means right now. The people and the base and everything pressing in around her. 

“I know.” He smiles sadly, but with resignation, and it surprises her if she’s honest. She’s not sure if she should be hurt, actually, that he doesn’t want to fight her on it, to convince her she belongs with him, that being with him, with SHIELD, is her home.

“You’re not going to try to convince me to come home with you?”

“I hope one day you’ll want to.”

And he’s so fucking earnest, is blue eyes so big and serious and understanding, it cuts through her chest like a knife, and she remembers him standing next to her in another cabin in the woods and telling her that he would never make her choices for her.

“I don’t know,” she tells him because she wants to be honest, at the very least, if she’s selfish and taking things from him that he doesn’t mean to give, if she's stupidly started something here that will just hurt him more, she at least wants to be honest.

He nods once, like it’s understandable.

“No matter what happens, if you need anything…” He could mean the medical care or the sandwiches, or — with the way his hand is curled around her waist and his neck is bare and his eyes look so sleepy and sensual — he could mean something else entirely.

It would be so much easier if she didn’t want to take him up on it, on whatever he’s offering her — on _everything_  she thinks he’s offering her.

Because what she needs is to have nothing to lose, to have no one to lose. What’s the point, anyways, if she’s worried about losing him, if she lets herself _need_ him. One look at his face, though, and she knows it’s already a lost cause.

“Yeah.”

And she kisses him again, soft and gentle, trying to give him something and not just take comfort.

 

* * *

 

 

When she leaves, he stands at the door with her, touches her forearms with concern that he doesn’t voice.

“Be safe,” he says instead.

“You, too.”

“And if you need —”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Then I’ll see you around, Daisy.”

She doesn’t say goodbye, either.


End file.
